First
of all, most evident changes were made in desktop area. We've updated
Xorg server and libraries, which allowed us to incorporate some
important security fixes from Oracle x-s12-clone and Debian Xorg. Also
we've moved much more closely to Gnome 2.32. Most packages were updated
to this level, excluding packages which either have a lot of specific
patches (like gdm) or just dropped some significant functionality (like
cheese, which dropped HAL support in version 2.32). Not everything has
gone smoothly. We had to drop trusted desktop support during update. I
believe nobody seriously used it under OI. The most annoying thing is
that updated Xorg and Intel driver require some DRM updates, which are
still not ready. So, if you have Intel video card, either pkg freeze
X-incorporation and xorg, or use vesa driver.

General system changes

All Sun Studio-compiled C++ libraries were removed from the system. The libraries were published in their current form tohttp://dlc.openindiana.org/c++-libs/,
so you can grub necessary libraries and LD_PRELOAD them or use in
alternative path if necessary. All X/g++/Y packages are renamed to X/Y
and moved from /usr/g++ to /usr. We continue delivering
system/library/c++/sunpro for the foreseeable future.

Text installer
was changed to install OI on EFI-labeled disk by default. Note, in this
case the entire disk is erased. If you want to install OI on
MBR-labeled disk, choose partitioned install.

Desktop software and libraries

A lot of desktop libraries were updated

GTK2 is updated to 2.24.27

libdrm is updated to 2.4.58

libX11 is updated to 1.6.2, xcb support is enabled in libX11

xf86-video-ati driver updated to 6.4.16

nvidia proprietary driver was updated to 340.76

Mesa is updated to 10.5.1

Xorg
is updated to 1.12.4. This requires updating xorg drivers and modules.
OI-shipped modules will be updated automatically, but if you use
VirtualBox, you'll have to update your guest additions to at least
4.3.22 version.

Glib2 is updated to 2.43.4

Enlightenment 0.19.3 is added as alternative desktop environment

fontconfig was updated to 2.11.1

libid3tag and libmtp were imported from SFE, gmtp is added

rdesktop is updated to 1.8.3

transmission is updated to 2.52

XScreensaver is updated to 5.32

gnome-commander is updated to 1.4.5

QT 4.8.6 is added

emacs is updated to 24.3

Input
Method Selector was added from upstream input-method gate. Bug in
svc:/application/desktop-cache/input-method-cache:default service
preventing correct input methods functioning in recent OI was fixed. In
fact, gtk input modules cache was moved from
/etc/(amd64/)gtk-2.0/gtk.immodules to
/usr/lib/(amd64/)gtk-2.0/2.10.0/immodules.cache and service has to
regenerate these cache files in new locations . So, after update you can
safely remove /etc/(amd64/)gtk-2.0/gtk.immodules.

Development tools

Subversion is updated to 1.7.19

SQLite is updated to 3.8.8.3

Python 3.4 is updated to 3.4.3

Binutils are updated to 2.25

OpenBLAS 0.2.13 is added

Mercurial is updated to 3.3

Ruby 1.9.3 is added

Ruby 1.8 is marked obsolete, all OI software is switched to Ruby 1.9.3

Ruby 2.2.1 is added

Curl is updated to 7.39

libncurses.so links are moved to /usr/lib(/amd64)

gawk is updated to 4.0.2, this fixes issues with pkgsrc bootstrap

MPICH is updated to 3.1.3

Sun Studio indent in /usr/bin was replaced by GNU indent. Old one is preserved in /opt/sunstudio12.1/prod/bin/indent

Of
course, I had more ideas than spare time, so some of them were not
implemented. We still don't have PHP 5.6 and our OpenOffice package
still doesn't work with XML-based document formats. I've looked at
replacing cpp with one based on Schilix version, but unfortunately I
found it to be not always compatible with Sun cpp. So, I've chosen
preserve the status quo and we still deliver Sun cpp. I still would like
to see postfix as first class MTA in OI.

I'd
like to share some more ideas, which attract me now. First of all, we
consider further updating of Xorg and other former xnv components
(libXfont, freetype). GCC update is also on the roadmap. Our old samba
and cups versions, dependency on python 2.6 and ageing Perl 5.16 make me
sad. Of course, I'd like to see PHP 5.6 in oi-userland and perhaps
even look at hhvm.